


speed limits (and how to break them)

by darcylindbergh



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Abuse of italics, Crowley's Anxiety Makes A Brief Appearance, Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Mutual Pining, Outrageous and Possibly Unhealthy Levels of Romance, The One In Which The Boys Get Romantic, Then Very Resolved Tensions Of All Kinds, This Fic Goes From 0 to 300 in the Exact Way A Slow Burn Does Not, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Valentine's Day, gift-giving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:22:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23881507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh
Summary: There is a trick people do with a mint candy and a bottle of cola which results in a small eruption, and something very like it, for much higher stakes than a laugh in a car park, is about to take place in Aziraphale’s back room.Or: what happens when you finally unscrew the cap on a six thousand years of repression, and drop in Valentine’s Day.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley
Comments: 815
Kudos: 1482
Collections: Ixnael’s Recommendations, Just Enough Of A Bastard to be Worth Knowing Biblically, Our Own Side





	1. L is for the Way You Look at Me

**Author's Note:**

> Quarantine: where the days don't matter and Valentine's Day is when I say it is.  
> Stay safe, friends.

“Valentine’s Day,” drawled Crowley.

Aziraphale gave a little sympathetic shudder. “Valentine’s Day,” he repeated.

They were drunk. Not the sort of drunk where everything went totally sideways and you lost track a bit of who you were, where you were, or what bananas were up to these days, but just the sort of drunk that made everything feel a bit warm and cosy and perhaps a little sleepy on the edges. It was a rather relaxed, domestic sort of drunk, and in the days following the end of the world, Crowley and Aziraphale had gotten especially good at it.

“It’s a demon’s dream, really,” Crowley went on, gesturing at Aziraphale with his glass of wine. He could feel a good, soothing rant coming on, and he sat up a little so that he could really commit himself to it. “Corporate wotsits have won on this one. Massive success, innit? Card companies conspiring with chocolatiers, that’s all that is, and humans fall for it every year.”

“And the jewellers,” Aziraphale added. “Don’t forget the jewellers.”

“And the jewellers,” Crowley agreed. “ _Oh, what’s this,_ they say. _If you loved them, you’d prove it, wouldn’t you? Hmm?_ Then: ka-blam! Suddenly you’re thousands of pounds into debt and you’ve broken up anyway, but hey, at least you had the Instagram moment.”

Aziraphale _hmmed_ consideringly to cover up the fact that he didn’t know what an Instantgram moment was. “Not even to _mention_ all the people who aren’t in love and wish they were—”

“And all the people who _are_ in love and wish they weren’t—”

“And all the people who aren’t sure whether they really are in love or whether they’re possibly just hungry—”

“And all the people who just wish everybody would _shut up_ about it—”

“It can be very painful, can’t it?” Aziraphale said, pouring himself a bit more wine. He looked at Crowley’s emptied glass, all the way across the room, and then at the bottle; the remaining wine helpfully relocated itself without his assistance. “All this talk about love. There are so many other good things in the world, there’s no sense in getting worked up about it—”

Crowley very clearly _was_ getting worked up about it. “I mean, it’s just a day,” he replied heatedly. “If they were going to get all showy about love, what’s so special about today? Could be any day, or no day—why is it that people need a day anyway?”

“Perfectly awful,” Aziraphale nodded sagely. “February, urgh. Why not, say, the third of September? The twenty-seventh of April? I _like_ April.”

Crowley ignored him; he was coming to some sort of conclusion. “I mean, the point is—the _point is_ —what do they need a special day for at all? If you love somebody, if you really truly love somebody, aren’t you supposed to love them every day? Not just on whatever day the dear old corporate candy-card-jewellery blokes say you ought, but aren’t you—aren’t you—aren’t you supposed to love them _all the time?_ ”

They both sat and thought about this for a moment.

Then Aziraphale said, “You know, humans aren’t actually very good at doing anything _all_ of the time. Very fickle things, humans. Contradictory lot.”

Crowley slumped back into his sprawl against the sofa. “S’pose you’re right,” he said. “Anyway, it doesn’t really affect _us_ , does it? We’re non-particky—particip—what do you call it? Exempted. On account of me being a demon and you being a right bastard.”

They both laughed, and, apparently satisfied with the conclusion of things, settled back into their seats, feeling rather smug and above it all. Besides, what self-respecting ethereal or occult being really needed to have anything to do with the holidays that humans make up for themselves? It wasn’t as if Valentine’s Day _mattered_ , in the great scheme of things.

They sipped their wine.

And then Aziraphale said, all in a rush, “Oh, bugger—I actually _did_ get you something.”

“Thank _Someone,_ ” Crowley declared, sitting back up, “I got you something too.”

*

Aziraphale, it turned out, had gotten Crowley roses.

“As soon as I saw them, I thought of you,” Aziraphale said, bringing an enormous arrangement down from the flat upstairs. “I couldn’t very well just _leave_ them, you understand. Who’d take care of them?”

“Oh, yeah, sure, of course, of course,” Crowley answered, though he hadn’t heard a single word Aziraphale had said.

He was too busy watching the gargantuan arrangement as it came toward him, round and round the spiral staircase in Aziraphale’s arms. The roses were huge and red, their blooms so big they nearly blocked Aziraphale’s face entirely from view and so dark they were nearly black. They had lush green leaves and long, thorny stems, and had all been tucked and arranged into an obsidian vase with a silver line around the neck.

It was sumptuous and sensual and unbearably romantic. Crowley found himself hoping his jaw had not dropped open in surprise, but he couldn’t spare the requisite awareness to check.

On the last turn of the stairs, however, one of the blooms caught on the edge of a book that had encroached over the railing—that shelf had been out of control for aeons, but usually Aziraphale remembered to avoid it—pulling the flower out of place and catching its thorns on Aziraphale’s lapel.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, surprised, instinctively holding the vase further away, which just pulled at the rose even more. “What’s this—?”

Crowley stepped forward before he could think not to, springing up right onto the bottom stair, and took hold of Aziraphale’s elbow to steady him. “Hang on, let me—” He reached over to the one caught on Aziraphale’s jacket, gently pulling it loose and slipping it back to where it belonged, glaring at it for good measure. “Got it.”

He looked up again, meeting Aziraphale’s eyes over the blooms. They smelled so heady and sweet that Crowley felt drunk on them—though probably that was the wine—and Aziraphale’s cheeks were so delicately flushed that Crowley caught himself wondering whether they’d be as soft to the touch as the velvety petals of the flowers.

That was _definitely_ the wine.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, half his mouth tipped into a smile.

“’Course, angel,” Crowley managed, and he forced himself to step away.

The arrangement was settled onto the desk in the back room, where Aziraphale’s ancient desktop computer had finally, if begrudgingly, resolved to take up significantly less space. Three dozen of those enormous scarlet roses, Crowley thought, or maybe more—it was hard to tell, with how big the heads were, how they were crowded together. He reached out to touch the red-dark petals, skating fingertips over the edges; he put a thumb up to one of the thorns, not pressing hard enough to break the skin, feeling the sharpness of it like an ache beneath his breastbone.

“Seemed a pity to let someone else take them home,” Aziraphale said, fidgeting with his hands for a moment, and then he stepped in a little closer, shoulder to shoulder with Crowley, reaching out to touch the petals of the bloom next to Crowley’s with trembling fingers. “I knew you’d take better care of them, is all.”

“Not a difficult bar to meet,” Crowley said hoarsely, but when he met Aziraphale’s gaze again, soft and intense and filled with the scent of roses, he didn’t really think they ever could have been meant for anybody else. “They’re beautiful.”

Aziraphale’s flush deepened, and his smile grew, and he leaned into Crowley’s shoulder, just the tiniest bit. “I’m glad you like them.”

It took Crowley nearly thirty full seconds to pull away, to remember to blink and breathe and mind himself. “Ah, right, your gift,” he said, leaving Aziraphale standing at the desk alone, stumbling out to retrieve his own gift from the Bentley like he’d been hit round the head and spun thrice in quick succession. “Let me just—be right back.”

He did not flee. That would have been _ridiculous._

*

Crowley, for his part, had gotten Aziraphale chocolates.

“Here,” he said, shoving the box unceremoniously into Aziraphale’s chest when he came back, flouncing past him to sprawl dramatically over the sofa, face-down in the pillows. “Figured they ought to go to somebody who’d actually appreciate them.”

Aziraphale gave a soft noise of surprise, which was going to echo in Crowley’s head for days, and sat in his armchair to examine it.

The box was gigantic, covered in creamy ivory velvet, and shaped, harrowingly, like a heart. Just seeing it in Aziraphale’s hands made Crowley feel like perhaps he ought to have skipped that last glass of wine; he could feel the tips of his ears burning pink.

He snuck another glance up at Aziraphale—pink as a carnation himself—and watched as he shimmied the lid off to peek inside.

Crowley knew exactly how they’d look before him. Rows and rows of chocolates, moulded into intricate shapes and flecked with edible gold, each tucked into dark frilly papers and set carefully into a spiral arrangement: dark chocolate truffles and white chocolate shells, sea-salted caramels and strawberry creams, cherry cordials and hazelnut pralines and coconut mounds and mocha drops and blackberry swirls and cinnamon ganaches and almond clusters and more. He could picture each and every one; he’d chosen them all carefully.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, looking over them all as they laid out before him. “Oh, Crowley.”

Crowley grunted into his pillow. “It’s just chocolate, angel,” he muttered.

It wasn’t just chocolate. It was indulgent— _beyond_ indulgent—it was extravagant. Lavish. _Tantalising_ , even, and Crowley knew it. Eaten one per day, savoured as a particular treat, the box would last Aziraphale more than half the year. Or he could eat them three at a time, arranged prettily onto a dessert plate with a wine accompaniment, enjoyed out on the lawns of St James’ Park; or he could eat them in bed, straight from the box, sucking at his fingers after each one so he didn’t leave smudgy fingerprints on the pages of his books.

Crowley buried his face back into the cushions.

“You’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth, haven’t you,” Aziraphale said, after a long moment, stretching his hand out over the box, hovering over this vanilla caramel, that mint chocolate coin. He was watching Crowley intently; his cheeks were flushed as fruit.

“Enough to know good chocolate when I see it,” Crowley answered, still muffled.

Aziraphale hummed, and finally made his choice: a chocolate so dark it would lean toward bittersweet, enveloping a dark ganache centre swirled with the clean tang of raspberry. He lifted up the little truffle in its frilly paper and set the box aside, then crossed over to the sofa with it. Crowley automatically scooted over, curling himself in a little at the waist to leave room for Aziraphale to sit.

“Share with me?” Aziraphale asked simply.

As if such a thing could be simple.

Crowley stared at him from behind his dark lenses. “They’re a gift for _you_ ,” he said.

“Sharing with you would still be _for me_ ,” Aziraphale answered. “Come on, half and half.” And he lifted the little chocolate from its nest, studied it to be sure he had the measure of half, brought it to his mouth, and bit cleanly through it.

“Mm,” he managed, swallowing down a moan, tilting his head back as his eyes drifted half-closed. “Mm, _Crowley_.”

Crowley licked his lips without meaning to, and when Aziraphale passed the second half into his shaking fingers, he couldn’t find the words to protest. He waited a moment, watching Aziraphale to give him the chance to change his mind, and then popped the treat into his mouth.

His eyes closed. His lips pursed, sucking a little at the chocolate tucked away behind his teeth. He knew now exactly how it had tasted to Aziraphale—exactly how it had melted in Aziraphale’s mouth, exactly how the bittersweet chocolate and the sharp raspberry had filled his senses. Exactly how it would still be lingering on his tongue.

“Good,” Crowley finally managed to say, around his heart in his throat. “S’good, angel.”

Aziraphale looked over at him, watching with a small, pleased smile. “Of course they are,” he said, as if that should be obvious. “They’re from you.”


	2. O is For the Only One I See

There was only one thing for it at that point: they opened up another bottle of wine.

The chocolates had been tucked away, miracled to stay fresh for however long it took Aziraphale to eat them all—and it could be a while, Crowley knew, given that Aziraphale particularly loved to savour things—and the roses had had a cheap packet of cut flower food dumped into the water, along with a very specific threat whispered into the petals. The two gifts sat side by side on the desk, taking up all the air in the room.

“Is this your, ah, first Valentine’s?” Aziraphale asked, taking a sip of the excellent Bordeaux he’d rustled up. “In the modern sense, I mean.”

“The modern sense?” Crowley raised his head from the arm of the sofa, quirking an eyebrow. “As opposed to what?”

Aziraphale shrugged. “Many people these days write about a connection to Lupercalia.”

“We were _there_ , angel. We know full well that Lupercalia didn’t have anything to do with Valentine’s, saintly or otherwise.”

“I know _that_ ,” Aziraphale tsked. “I’m only drawing the distinction. Have you?”

Crowley blinked at him. “Have I what?”

“Ever had a Valentine before?”

The glass of wine in Crowley’s hand nearly got away from him then, slipping precariously in his grasp. He shot a quick glance over to the vase of roses and the box of chocolates again— _before_ rang through his mind, as loud and chaotic as church bells all ringing out of unison, suggesting he had a Valentine now. Did he? Had Aziraphale—had they—but no one had said _specifically_ —

“Er, no,” he managed, trying and failing to set his glass on the coffee table between them. “Never really been my thing.”

“Me neither,” Aziraphale confessed. “Got a few anonymous little postcards, that year after the penny black was issued—you remember those?‌ The early cards were a little, well—”

“Absurd?” Crowley supplied.

“I‌ got one with a dancing lobster on it once,” Aziraphale said, grimacing. “Never did find out who sent that one.”

They both looked down into their wine glasses, considering: Aziraphale, as to who might’ve sent such a bizarre announcement of affection, and Crowley, as to whether Aziraphale had known enough strange people back in the early 1840’s to prevent him from ever figuring out that it had been _Crowley_ that had sent it. Probably there was no danger of it; nearly everyone had been strange in the early 1840’s.

That had been before—well, before so much, really.

Before they’d argued about holy water; before Crowley had slept off the century. Before Aziraphale had forgotten his most prized possessions in the hands of a Nazi in order to save Crowley from his own risky stupidity. Before a thermos, and a rejection with a promise buried in its center:‌ _You go too fast for me, Crowley_.

Crowley’d stopped looking at Valentine’s cards after that. Speed limits may not be his forte, but he could still read a damn signpost.

But then the world had ended and subsequently lived on, and Crowley and Aziraphale were on their own side, and things were different. _Very_ different—red roses and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates levels of different, apparently.

He eyed them where they sat side-by-side, each of them so elaborately traditional, so outrageously universal about what they stood for, what they meant, and wondered if they still meant those things here and now.

_How fast are we going, angel? Which direction are we headed?_

Generally speaking, Crowley liked questions.

He did not like these ones.

He didn’t like them because Aziraphale was trickier to read than a Kindle under the glare of direct sunlight, and Crowley had absolutely no clue what the answers might turn out to be. He might hazard a guess, but if he were _wrong_ —if he moved too fast, or in the wrong direction—if he asked for something Aziraphale wasn’t ready to give, or maybe didn’t want to ever give—well, looking very silly would be the least of his problems.

“I got you something else too,” Aziraphale said suddenly, interrupting Crowley’s train of thought. More like derailing his train of thought, dramatically and at great speed. “Just a little—it’s not much.”

Crowley blinked intelligently. “Oh?”

“It’s just, the roses will die eventually,” Aziraphale fussed, ignoring Crowley when he muttered _not if they know what’s good for them_ under his breath. “I wanted to give you something a little more lasting.”

And Aziraphale scooted to the front of his seat and reached into his coat, digging about in the inner pocket for a moment before drawing out something clutched in his fist. He looked up with such an unexpected plea in his eyes— _please take this, please accept this_ —that, startled, Crowley sat himself up and drained a little of the alcohol off his bloodstream, just in case.

Aziraphale held out his fist, hesitating, his gaze locked on his own fingernails as though willing his palm to open. Crowley slid from the sofa to the coffee table, sitting across and reaching out to cup his hands underneath Aziraphale’s, steadying him.

“Go on,”‌ he said quietly.

Aziraphale unfurled his hand.

They were seeds. Small, oval seeds, each a dark, russet brown; they laid out in Aziraphale’s palm the same way they would have had they still been tucked inside their fruit, in the unmistakable pattern of a star. Apple seeds.

“It’s a wild variety,” Aziraphale said as Crowley reached out a fingertip to touch one. “From Turkey. The oldest strain in the world now, they think. It’s said the apples taste like honey.”

“Back to where it all started,” Crowley murmured. “Back to Eden.”

“Where we met,” Aziraphale agreed, and he carefully tipped the seeds into Crowley’s palm. “I didn’t realise then what any of it would mean, you know. Standing with the Serpent on the wall. But everything that’s happened since then—” He curled Crowley’s own fingers up over the seeds, protecting them, his hand warm on Crowley’s skin— “I’m glad it led us to this.”

Crowley didn’t trust himself to speak. He didn’t trust himself to move. Here in the low light of the back room, with Aziraphale’s hands folded around his, with his eyes saying more than had ever been said, with the five tiny seeds of an ancient fruit waiting in his palm, he felt like he was bubbling over. He felt like he was coming apart.

He felt like he could really use a fucking clue about the current posted speed limits, because he wanted to tuck these seeds away and kiss his thanks right into Aziraphale’s mouth.

He would probably still taste like chocolate.

“Our side,” Crowley finally choked out, offering Aziraphale a rickety smile. He wanted to take his sunglasses off. He wanted to take his heart out of his chest and let Aziraphale see it, in all its wretched, aching honesty, beating for him. “That was where it started, wasn’t it? A bit.”

Aziraphale smiled back at him, as if he could see it all anyway. “Our side,”‌ he repeated.

A hundred miles an hour wouldn’t have felt as fast as this, right here, right now. “I’m glad we’re here too,”‌ Crowley said, and Aziraphale didn’t ask him to slow down.

*

Crowley was an expert hemmer and hawer. He hemmed fantastically, and he hawed terrifically, and all in all he was very good at dodging, evading, falsifying, quibbling, avoiding, concealing, and all other equivocation skills. He was a demon, after all; it came with the territory.

Aziraphale liked to _appear_ as if he were an expert in hemming and hawing at various times and over various topics, but the truth was that Aziraphale was a doer. He just _did_ things, usually without thinking them through at all, and he quibbled and hedged over it afterwards.

That wasn’t hemming and hawing, in Crowley’s professional opinion. That was just _fussing_.

Right now Crowley was hemming and hawing over speed limits, and whether he ought to go quite as fast as Aziraphale seemed to be. On the one hand, if he sped along too fast he might find himself overreaching what Aziraphale had been prepared for; on the other, if he puttered along too slowly, he might create a question for Aziraphale that would be beyond ridiculous. _Do you still—?_

Of course he _still_.

But there were five wild apple seeds burning a hole in Crowley’s pocket, pulsing with the faint rhythm of waiting life, and if Crowley hemmed and hawed much longer he might lose the chance entirely.

Aziraphale had switched to cocoa after the last glass of wine, and Crowley had been nursing his own close to his chest, letting the warmth sink down into his bones. He waited until Aziraphale had slouched comfortably again in his chair, until some of the tension had drained out of his shoulders, and then he set his mug down.

“You know,” Crowley started slowly, reaching into a little pocket dimension inside his coat and rooting around for the blessed thing, “I’ve been thinking. About where we started, and getting here, and all that. And I‌ may have gotten you another thing too.”

“Oh, you didn’t,”‌ Aziraphale said, but he was smiling behind his cocoa and sounded altogether delighted, so Crowley pulled out the old rumpled envelope anyway and passed it across the room.

“It’s not much. Just a little—I‌ don’t even know if you’ll want it, really, if you’ll have any—any _use_ for it—we’re not really big on this sort of thing—”

But Aziraphale was already setting his own mug down and pulling an old, yellowing page out from the envelope. He unfolded it with careful fingers, reading silently, though his mouth moved along to the unfamiliar French words.

“I can translate it for you,” Crowley rushed to add, “I know French was never your strongest language. And I have one of those special pan things that they use for these, though I‌ haven’t actually tried it yet—”‌

“Crowley,”‌ Aziraphale interrupted, staring at the page. “This is a recipe for crepes.”‌

Crowley cleared his throat, then grabbed his cocoa and took a sip to buy some time. “Mm. It’s, er. Well, it’s _the_ recipe for crepes, actually. From when you nearly got your head chopped off during the Reign of Terror, we went for lunch, do you remember?‌ And I thought I’d better get the recipe for you, so you wouldn’t have to risk discorporation the next time you got peckish.”

Aziraphale finally looked up; his eyes were positively enormous. “Have you had this in your pockets since 1793?”‌

“No. Well. Off and on,” Crowley hedged. He was very good at hedging usually, but the look in Aziraphale’s eyes made Crowley suspect he wasn’t getting much past him. “Inter-dimensional wotsit, mostly. Not, you know, my actual pockets.”

“You saved my life,” Aziraphale remembered. “That’s really why you were there, wasn’t it? Not whatever line about commendations or whatever. You knew I’d gotten myself into trouble, and you came to save me.”‌

Crowley flushed. “I saved your _neck_ ,” he clarified. “Your life wasn’t exactly on the line in revolutionary France. And really, you could’ve done the miracle yourself.”

“Maybe,” Aziraphale said, “but I‌ didn’t have to. You’d already done it.”‌

“Yeah, all right, tell the whole blessed world.”

He was smiling, though, watching Aziraphale remember the Bastille, the dramatic rescue, the crepes they’d had after—savoury and hot, filled with salty ham and smooth, nutty cheese. Crowley had miracled them both back home across the Channel afterwards, and Aziraphale hadn’t said thank you but it’d been very heavily implied that he’d only restraining himself for Crowley’s sake, and Crowley’d felt very dashing about the whole thing.

“That was the first time, you first know.”

Aziraphale looked up, tearing his eyes away from the fading ink. “The first time what?”

“That I saved you.” Crowley couldn’t believe he was saying it, but he kept on saying it anyway, and hoped Aziraphale could hear everything he really meant to be saying: all this, and more. “At the Bastille, that was the first time I ever saved you. The first time you ever let me.”

Aziraphale’s gaze went impossibly tender, impossibly soft.

“Oh, Crowley,” he said. “It really wasn’t.”


	3. V is Very, Very Extraordinary

Now the bookshop had fallen quiet.

It wasn’t unusual, between the two of them, for an evening to drag out into a comfortable silence. For them to reach the bottom of a bottle and a conversation, and then to fall into their own silent reveries. For Crowley to lay back on the sofa and drift into quiet contemplation of what horrible things he might be able to dig up on Twitter the next day; for Aziraphale to hum happily and reach for a book, and to not suggest that he might prefer to be alone for the reading of it.

 _This_ was not a comfortable silence. _This_ was—well, awkward.

Crowley couldn’t even remember the last time they’d had an awkward silence between them. Probably not since the end of the world, six bloody months ago, and now Valentine’s Day had barged into the room as if it were passing out leaflets and asking for signatures on a petition, trapping them in a not-really-sort-of-conversation they’d walked blindly into and couldn’t quite figure out how to leave.

It was all just too _close_ , somehow, and yet still too far apart—like standing directly across from one another, hands held out, but still unable to _find_ each other, still unable to touch.

Suddenly the whole thing seemed just unbearable: the distance, the speed, the uncertainty, the bloody fucking petition asking for signatures in support of _Project_ _Touch Aziraphale Now Please!_ Aziraphale had been studying his mug of cocoa for nearly six straight minutes without a word, and Crowley couldn’t think of how to say a damn thing other than the words that have been trying to crawl out of his mouth for nearly six thousand years, and suddenly it was all too big, too much, pressing too hard on his breastbone from the inside out.

_Does any of this mean what I want this to mean? Does any of this mean anything at all?_

Crowley needed to leave. He needed to just pack this entire night in and take himself off home with his roses and his apple seeds, and forget this feeling of standing right in front of each other, reaching out and still only just barely missing. Odds were that in the morning he’d look back on this and laugh at himself the way he had a dozen times before: more fool him, for seeing things that were never actually there.

“Well, angel,” he said, standing rather abruptly. He set his own mug of half-drunk cocoa on the coffee table and instantly missed having something to do with his hands. “Guess I ought to be heading out. Hitting the ol’ dusty trail. Getting late, after all.”

Aziraphale looked up at him as if he’d forgotten Crowley was even there. He stared up at him for a moment, wide-eyed and almost wondering.

And then Aziraphale took a deep breath, and said, rather inexplicably, “I’m in love with you.”

There was a pause.

The pause continued until it had stretched out into a proper moment, and then went on to become a solid minute. Aziraphale’s expression did not change, staring with those huge, awestruck eyes; Crowley blinked back at him, and then, very slowly, sat back down.

“Sorry,” he said finally, feeling a bit outside himself, as if he were watching himself as he tried to behave like a real person and missed by a wide margin, “I don’t think I caught that.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat, and repeated the same words in the same order, as if they made any more sense now than they had a minute ago. “I’m in love with you.”

And then he grinned, as if quite satisfied with how they all sounded.

Crowley stared. 

“Been wondering when I was going to say that,” Aziraphale confided, a bit smugly, sitting back in his chair. “Didn’t quite expect it just then, but it was rather good, wasn’t it?”

Crowley continued to stare at him. He was aware, quite suddenly, that he couldn’t breathe. He felt like he should be reaching for something to grab onto, only there was nothing to grab; he ended up with white-knuckled handfuls of the sofa cushion beneath him. There was this incredible sound, like a waterfall rushing over the edge, only he was still pretty sure they were in Aziraphale’s back room, and he was only slightly less sure that there wasn’t a waterfall in there.

 _Is this the feeling humans mean_ , he thought distantly, _when they say to put your head between your knees?_

He had no idea. He put his head between his knees anyway, just to check. It wasn’t really that helpful.

“Oh, dear,” a voice said, somewhere beyond the rushing sound of what must have been the bloody Victoria Falls, and then there was a weight on the sofa cushion next to him, tugging it out of Crowley’s grasp, and a hand rubbing a circle on his back. That would have been more helpful, except he strongly suspected that it was Aziraphale doing it; he couldn’t decide whether to be comforted or to just discorporate himself while he still had the chance.

“I suppose I might’ve fudged that, after all,” Aziraphale was saying, once the Victoria Falls began to relocate themselves back to Africa where they damn well belonged. Aziraphale was still sitting next to him, looking _amused_ of all things, as if Crowley weren’t having some kind of crisis. “Though in fairness I didn’t expect you to be quite so shocked.”

“No?” Crowley asked, a bit strangled. “What were you expecting me to be?”

Aziraphale had his hand on Crowley’s thigh, and it weighed about eleventy-billion pounds there, soft as anything as he rubbed it back and forth a little. If Crowley’d known the petition had actually read _Touch Crowley Now Please!_ he’d have signed it ages ago, but as things were, he was still trying to catch his breath.

“Well,” Aziraphale said, “it’s not like you didn’t already _know_ , so—”

“Know?” Crowley sputtered. “When in Heaven was I supposed to have known _that?_ ”

Aziraphale gave him a look that bordered dangerously on an eye-roll, and said, with a little sniff, “Well, it _has_ been six thousand years, Crowley.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said incredulously, “six thousand years of _you go too fast_ and _we’re not friends_ and—and—you’re an _angel!_ I’m a _demon!_ Don’t blame _me_ if I got a bit stuck on all that rot—”

“You _are_ a demon, in case it’s escaped your notice. And there should’ve been plenty to go on anyway—look, I gave you _roses_ —”

“ _Half a bloody hour ago_ —”

“It’s not my fault if you weren’t paying attention all this time—”

“I _was_ paying attention, I’m never _not_ paying attention, you great winged idiot—”

“Oh, _clearly_ ,” Aziraphale shot back acerbically, but now Crowley could see that his hands were shaking too, and his mouth had gone tense and unhappy, and it made Crowley want to scream and laugh and crawl into Aziraphale’s chest and live side-by-side with the absurdity that was his heart, his _ridiculous_ , righteous heart, that had apparently been trying to say something but in a language Crowley had only ever seen written down, and had never heard spoken out loud. “Paying attention so well that you—”

“Show me,” Crowley interrupted.

Aziraphale stopped short, already mid-way through drawing in a breath no doubt intended to power _quite_ the run-down of all the ways Aziraphale had loved Crowley over the years. “What?”

“Show me,” Crowley repeated, frustrated with how _close_ everything was and wild with the daring of making demands. “Don’t tell me about before, show me _now_. You keep saying things like we both understand but I don’t, Aziraphale, I don’t. I don’t know what it means. You have to _show me_.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “You don’t—oh.”

The rushing was back in Crowley’s head, and they were sitting directly across from each other, reaching out into that vast empty space between them, and this time—this time their hands _touched_ , their fingers _clasped_ , their palms _met_ , sweat-damp and warm, and Crowley tried not to choke on the _maybe_ and the _possibly_ and the _hope_ of it.

“Show me,” he said again, and when he met Aziraphale’s gaze he could tell he was pleading and it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter in the least, because he had to _know_. “I swear I’m paying attention this time, angel. Show me.”

For a moment, Crowley thought Aziraphale might actually say _no_.

Instead he nodded slowly and said, “Close your eyes,” and then he snapped.

*

Crowley opened his eyes in a garden.

Everything was pale and shining in the moonlight, hazy and dreamlike and shadowed in blues and violets. The space backed up against a flint and mortar cottage on one side and opened to a meadow on the other, and the sky seemed endless over it all.

The plants around them were all dormant, bare and grey in the midwinter night. Stark branches and vines settled thick and wild over the frosted ground, but Crowley could feel the life in everything, the waiting it was all doing for the right moment, for the warmth of spring and the fall of rain and the care of tender hands to guide it back into a living sanctuary. This place would grow lush, and beautiful; this place would grow a paradise.

He looked over at Aziraphale, at their hands still slotted together, and couldn’t find more than a whisper in his voice. “What is this?”

“I know it needs a bit of work,” Aziraphale answered hesitantly. “But being that it’s just the two of us now, on our own side, I thought that perhaps—well, the cottage is big enough for two, and I thought that perhaps you’d—perhaps this would be a good enough place to plant your apple seeds. Here. With me. ”

_Oh._

Crowley looked out over the garden again, imagining _his_ hands buried in its dirt, imagining _his_ hands guiding its vines and pruning back its bushes and coaxing forth its flowers. Imagining Aziraphale, dressed down to his waistcoat, settled in the shade with a book over his lap and a preposterous straw hat on his head, keeping Crowley in tall glasses of ice water and quiet company. Imagining the row of apple trees that could grow on the outer boundary, where the garden gave way to meadow and field; imagining the red fruits that would fill his palm, and taste of honey, and sunlight, and a place that had never been _home_ but had been a beginning nonetheless.

“When I say that I love you,” Aziraphale went on, squeezing Crowley’s hand and drawing him back to here, and now, “this is what I mean. That I want you with me, and—and to never be parted. And it doesn’t have to be _here_ , particularly, if you don’t like it, but I thought—I could have my books here, and you could have your garden. And together we could see if we can make something grow.”

Crowley’s fingers were cold in the chill of the evening, but Aziraphale’s were warm around his, and finally, Crowley understood.

“That’s what I mean, too,” he said, “when I say that I love you.”

And slowly, Aziraphale smiled.

He smiled, and then he was laughing, and then he was pulling Crowley close to him, wrapping those strong arms around his waist to lift him up and swing him in a circle, and Crowley was laughing too, something thick and heavy in his chest melting away at every turn, breaking down and letting out everything Crowley’d kept inside all these years, and the noise of it and the joy of it echoed out all the way to the stars.

 _This is what it is to be happy,_ Crowley thought, and he’d have been damned embarrassed to think it except that when Aziraphale finally set him back on his own two feet again, it was like he could see all the light in all the universe, shining out of Aziraphale’s eyes at him. _For_ him.

And then Aziraphale kissed him.

Aziraphale kissed him, and it was warm and slow and perfect—kissed him with two hands cupped around Crowley’s face as if he were something precious, kissed him with their two useless, hurried hearts pounding against one another in their chests. Aziraphale kissed him as though he wanted to tell him something _more,_ to tell him _everything_ , as if he loved Crowley even _beyond_ language and needed to press it into his mouth, his lips, his tongue, so that Crowley could know the shape of it and the weight of it and the _taste_ of it, bittersweet and brilliant.

Aziraphale kissed him, and Crowley had been right.

He did taste a little bit like chocolate.

*

There had been a fantasy, once.

It had started back in the 90’s with some stupid Valentine’s Day commercial, and Crowley had _hated_ it. He’d hated the twinkling little lights and the improbably deserted landmark location; he’d hated the fake laughter of the actors and how easy they made it look to be in love. He’d hated that he’d remembered it, afterward, and that he couldn’t forget it; he’d hated how close it felt and how real it felt and how much he _wanted_ it.

There were just some things, Crowley knew, that would only ever exist in fantasies, and he hated every single one he’d ever dreamt up.

It didn’t stop him dreaming, though, and this one in particular had long since been worn in with familiarity. It was a fantasy of long walks arm-in-arm down tree-lined avenues and of cheeks gone pink with cold, of the heat of bodies pressed comfortably together and of the gentle reassurance of everything that meant _exactly_ what it all should have meant. Of smiling at one another, and laughing with one another, and of looking at one another without ever having to look away and pretend like they hadn’t seen.

It was a fantasy where Aziraphale loved him, and wanted him; a fantasy where Crowley knew it, and only had one final question.

Kissing Aziraphale—standing in a garden Aziraphale had chosen for _them_ and _kissing him—_ felt like that fantasy: the warmth and the steadiness and the glow, the joy and the exhilaration and the _peace._

And that, Crowley would think later, was where things went sideways.


	4. E is Even More Than You Imagined That You'd Be Adored

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we earn the E rating. For those not interested in that, skip the section that begins, "He'd imagined this a thousand times..." and pick up at the next. <3

Crowley’s knee hit the ground.

No—that wasn’t quite right. Crowley’s knee simply was, quite suddenly, _on_ the ground. Just like his wings were suddenly outstretched from his shoulder blades and his hands were suddenly curled protectively around something small and hard, something covered in the velvety fuzz of a peach.

Just like he was suddenly no longer kissing an angel; just like he was suddenly sure that they weren’t in any moon-drenched garden anymore.

Crowley did not, metaphysically speaking, perform miracles.

It was very _like_ performing miracles, with the same general results, but it wasn’t actually the same. Miracles were performed by tapping into Heaven’s power and drawing it down; what Crowley did was more like digging his hands into the earth, and forcing what he found there _up_.

Crowley knew that, obviously. Doing it _felt_ different than performing miracles had, like expecting one too many steps at the bottom of the stairs. Eventually he’d got used to it.

What Crowley _didn’t_ know, however, was that there were some things that happened without pulling up _or_ down. There were some things that drew from _within_ , and these were neither miracles nor devilry: things that came from somewhere beyond intent, from places like _want_ and _hope_ and _expectation;_ things brought forth with very little in the way of deliberation and generally quite a lot in the way of distraction.

Things like a 1926 Bentley being able to safely navigate central London at speeds in excess of 90 miles per hour, or like tables at the Ritz always being free, or like the doors of certain bookshops never being locked.

Standing in the chill of a midwinter night, surrounded by the bramble of a not-yet garden and the warmth of a now-finally kiss, Crowley wasn’t thinking about miracles.

He was thinking about the taste of Aziraphale’s mouth and the heat of Aziraphale’s hands, thinking that he’d never thought, that he’d never dared imagine—but that wasn’t right, was it? He _had_ thought, he _had_ imagined, lost hours to the mere idea of it, and now here they were and this was happening and it was everything he’d ever wanted and everything he’d ever hoped for and everything he’d expected he’d never have, and it was so easy to love Aziraphale in this moment, and Crowley smiled against Aziraphale’s mouth and wondered, _is this really possible—?_

 _Good question_ , the universe apparently thought, and then everything folded itself up like an accordion and slid, a little giddily, _sideways_ , so Crowley could find out.

About a hundred and ninety-six miles sideways, to be exact.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, blinking and looking about them. “Paris?”

And then Crowley suddenly knew exactly what he was holding.

He’d had this fantasy before.

*

All right, yes: it was Paris.

The Champ de Mars was quiet and still, crystalline in the snow-dusted dark; the trees were all lit with fairy lights in their neat rows up and down the avenues. Everything was, rather improbably, deserted, and it was a good thing too, because Crowley could feel his wings stretching huge and black and corporeal behind him.

And there, sparkling against the night sky like a pour of champagne, stood the Eiffel Tower.

How completely and outstandingly mortifying.

Aziraphale was already offering _so much_ , only just beginning to reach past the stop signs, and Crowley had to go and do _Paris_.

“I didn’t mean to,” Crowley blurted out, as the two of them stared at one another. He pressed the thing in his hands harder against his breastbone, trying to return it to himself, to push it back inside to whatever had made it real. It wouldn’t go. “Don’t know what happened, I didn’t mean—”

He didn’t know what he’d meant. 

He curled himself around his hands and told himself fiercely to _slow down_ , because this was _fast_ , too fast, faster than chocolates or crepes or any other odd thing, this was less like blowing past the posted speed limits and more like ricocheting around the planet in three seconds flat, like burning up the fuel on the launch pad and soaring as a fireball into the atmosphere. He needed less _fiery disintegrating rocket_ and more—something else. Glacier, maybe. Garden snail. Ninety-three year old granny crossing Trafalgar Square during rush hour traffic.

 _Anything but this_.

“Nothing wrong with a little impromptu miracling,” Aziraphale soothed with a good-natured laugh, which was all well and good for _him_ since _he_ was clearly in control of his damn self. “Here, let me—” and he reached for Crowley’s hands to pull him to his feet.

Crowley floundered, drawing back instinctively to clutch the thing he held closer to his chest. “ _No—”_

But it was too late. Aziraphale had seen.

His eyes went wide. His cheeks went pink. He stopped, hands still outstretched, and stared.

“ _What,”_ he said, his voice echoing through the park with a supernatural echo of astonished trumpets layered in underneath, “ _is that?”_

_“I don’t know just give a minute here—”_

“ _Did you just_ —”

“I said I don’t know!”

He did know, though. It was the old fantasy come to life, a Valentine’s Day commercial wrenched traitorously into reality: his knee bent before the only being he’d ever really loved, which was saying something for someone originally made to do nothing _but_ love, in a preposterously romantic location on a preposterously romantic day, offering up his heart in the shape of eternity.

It was a ring.

Barely anything, really. Barely a blip on the realm of existence. Just a twist of metal and a little black velvet box with a white silk interior, cupped in Crowley’s hands, pressed against his thundering heart. He wanted to dissolve it underneath his fingers, send it back to whatever stardust or snow it had been wrought from, turn it back to dust. It was too much and too fast and too needlessly ridiculous. 

It was, in the grand scheme of things, _absolutely nothing._

There was silence. Aziraphale stood frozen, staring, his hands hanging uselessly by his sides where they’d slipped off Crowley’s; Crowley bent his head and wanted and hoped and _prayed_ that this moment would end.

Instead the cloudless skies opened over the City of Lovers, and it began to snow.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, much quieter this time, the echo of trumpets having melted away to leave nothing but his own soft voice behind. “Show me.”

Crowley struggled for breath, his hands squeezing tight around the little black box he held. Struggled against the weight of it on his chest, the weight that said _stop_ , the weight that said _slow down_ , that said _not too fast._ The one that said _maybe someday_ , then turned around at the pivotal moment and said, _it’s over._

It was a well-known, too-familiar weight, and it had always felt like Aziraphale’s own hand, stretched out to keep him at arm’s length, pressing back hard against the steady _tha-thump-tha-thump_ of Crowley’s wholly irredeemable heart.

But Aziraphale’s hands weren’t stopping him anymore, were they?

They were sliding back over his wrists, holding onto him like hope on tenterhooks, stroking thumbs over the delicate skin there to find that _tha-thump_ raging underneath. Encouraging, consoling—easing them forward, rather than pushing them back.

And Aziraphale had given him roses, and apples that tasted like honey; Aziraphale had kissed him in a garden, and asked him to stay.

“I love you,” Crowley said, the words spilling out from his throat where they’d been stoppered for so long. They were like milk and honey, soothing and sweet; they were like fire and ice, raging and raw. “I have always loved you. I want to love you forever.”

He looked up, blinking through blurred eyes at Aziraphale, who was every inch the angel in the muted lights of Paris, in the twilight sparkle of the Eiffel Tower. There was snow glittering in his eyelashes and along his shoulders; there was colour rising in his cheeks from the chill.

“I know this is just a silly human thing,” Crowley went on, and his hands were shaking where they lay cupped in Aziraphale’s hands and his voice was trembling where it stuttered from his mouth, “and humans aren’t even all that good at it themselves sometimes, you know? But it’s—it’s—”

It was a promise. It was a beginning. It was a circle closing and hanging onto itself; it was an ouroboros, never-ending, always-new. It was a symbol that everyone could read, little more than a human curiosity but carrying _such weight_ , to show it freely, to wear their alliance and their allegiance for anyone to see after six thousand years of hiding even a hint of it. To say without words that _I belong with him;_ to know without speaking that _he belongs with me._

It was that cottage on the South Downs with its half-wild garden, waiting for hands to tend to it; it was a new dawn cresting over the horizon, greeted with a kiss.

“It’s _our side_ ,” Crowley finally choked out. “It’s our side.”

Aziraphale was no more than a wash of salt-water and colour, but Crowley could hear the smile forming around his words. “Our side,” he repeated, soft with what sounded like awe, and maybe even happiness. “Together beyond the end of the world. I did say I wanted never to be parted, you know.”

Crowley huffed a laugh, and something hot and stinging dropped down his cheeks, and he had no idea if this was fear or joy or something else entirely but he was full up of it, drowning in it, flying with it. “Yeah, you did, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Aziraphale laughed back. “See? I told you you weren’t paying attention.”

And _fuck_ , but Crowley loved him.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale finally said when their laughter slowed, soft and gentle, his thumbs stroking again over Crowley’s wrists, standing there waiting with the lights of Paris in his hair and starlight in his eyes and all the love in the world shining from somewhere deep inside him, “I think you should ask me.”

Crowley nodded. He shook, and he breathed, and then finally, after six thousand years of waiting, he asked. “Will you marry me?”

Aziraphale looked at him for a long moment. 

Then he smiled, crooked and wondering, and took the little box from Crowley’s hands—like lifting the weight of the world off Crowley’s breastbone, leaving him adrift somewhere in the atmosphere—and took the ring from it, holding it up to see it in the light.

Aziraphale slipped the ring onto the fourth finger of his left hand, and said, “ _Yes_.” 

And Crowley was on his feet then, from one moment to the next, without having stood himself up but it didn’t matter because Aziraphale had him, Aziraphale had him wrapped in strong arms and white wings and a smile that could have lit up the _galaxy_ , steadying him like he’d never been steadied before, kissing him like he’d never thought anyone could be kissed, and Aziraphale said, rough against his cheeks, his mouth, his eyelids, “Yes, oh _Crowley_ , _yes_.”

 _Yes_ , Crowley felt, pulsing through him with every kiss and touch and breath, _yes, yes, yes_ , pounding from Aziraphale’s heart into his, and for once and finally and forever, it was so, so _easy_ to be in love. 

*

“Do you know, I had never seen it before?”

Aziraphale gestured up at the Eiffel Tower with the crepe in his hand; the slim gold band on the fourth finger glittered as he moved. Crowley’s hand tightened where it was entwined with Aziraphale’s other hand on the bench between them.

“Really? Not once?”

Aziraphale shook his head and took another bite of his crepe. Strawberries and whipped cream, this time, wrapped up neatly in a paper cone. “Haven’t been back since the 18th century. Didn’t quite make it for the World’s Fair and then there didn’t seem to be any point.”

Crowley had never imagined, never dared to dream about what might come _afterward_ , after the commercial cut to black. What might happen when the kisses had faded and he was left in a whole new world—one where he loved, and was loved; one where he knew it, and believed it, and where he had no more questions left to ask. 

Aziraphale had seemed to understand, though, without Crowley having to say. He’d kissed Crowley’s cheek and took his hand and suggested that since they were already in Paris anyway, they might as well take advantage.

And so there were crepes, and paper cups of coffee, and thick scarves to wrap around their necks as they sat together on park bench—all of which seemed to have appeared out of thin air, not that Crowley was in any position to be critical about it—-and it was quiet, and familiar, and perhaps unseasonably warm.

It wasn’t what Crowley probably would have imagined, had he ever dared, but he was glad he hadn’t. It wouldn’t have been nearly as good as this anyway.

“Why Paris?” Aziraphale asked, after he finished his crepe. 

“Mm?”

“Just curious. Of all the places we’ve been, you picked Paris.”

Crowley shrugged, one-shouldered, and tried to think of a way to _not_ say that he’d seen a commercial in 1997 and ended up a little fixated on the idea of it. “Most romantic city in the world, innit?”

“Suppose so. It did seem awfully perfect, didn’t it?”

“’Course it was perfect. Did you think I was going to have you on with a less than perfect moment?”

Aziraphale looked up at the Eiffel Tower again, and suddenly he wasn’t so much looking _up_ as he was looking _away._

“Can’t say I ever thought about it at all,” he finally said, looking down at their hands again, holding on to one another. “It would’ve been too big, you understand. Before. And since Armageddon, I don’t know. I’d put you off for so long, I wondered if—if there was any chance for something more, and if I’d ruin everything if I asked.”

That was fair, Crowley thought. He’d thought much the same thing.

He’d still bought the chocolates, though, and Aziraphale— “You still bought the roses.”

Aziraphale smiled faintly. “Yes,” he agreed. “I still bought the roses.”

“And the apple seeds.”

“I did. Sometime before Christmas, actually.”

“And the cottage.”

“And quite a lot of things to go inside the cottage, too. Fully stocked.” He eyed Crowley determinedly. “Your horrible gilt throne will be going into your office and not our sitting room, just so you know.”

Crowley couldn’t stop smiling. It wasn’t even worth arguing about the throne—not just then, anyway. “And you said yes.”

Aziraphale looked at him properly, then, and Crowley didn’t think he’d ever get tired of Aziraphale looking at him like that. Not in another six thousand years; not in another six million. Not if the world imploded in on itself or the very universe collapsed.

“Yes,” Aziraphale repeated softly. “I’m all out of _no_ , I’m afraid. All I have left for you is _yes_. The answer is always going to be _yes_.” 

There wasn’t anything Crowley could really say to that, and he spent several long moments on the park bench improvising a response instead.

“Angel,” he finally said, breathing against Aziraphale’s mouth, “let’s go home.”

*

Aziraphale brought them to the cottage.

Crowley had expected the _bookshop_ , when Aziraphale had raised his hand and snapped, and for a moment the unfamiliar shadows threw him off, left him stumbling. Aziraphale was already there to catch him though, and he barely had time to take in the lines of a kitchen before Aziraphale was kissing him again.

“Welcome home,” Aziraphale murmured against him, and Crowley didn’t give sod-all about the kitchen then, it could be a bloody industrial catering job, it could be the stupid _Bake-Off_ tent for all he cared.

They were _home_.

“You really want this,” Crowley said, pushing back into Aziraphale, learning the curves and the textures and the weight of him with tentative hands. It wasn’t a question—it was a realization, a _testament,_ feeling out the outline of the truth of it, laying out the cautious boundaries of a new creed, a new faith. “You really do.”

“I really do,” Aziraphale answered between kisses. “You do too.”

“Don’t be an idiot. Of course I do.”

Aziraphale laughed, finally wrestling himself away from Crowley’s mouth and tucking his face into Crowley’s neck instead, breathing hot and damp. “Suppose I ought to let you go poke around the place. See if you like it. Did you want the full tour?”

He did and he didn’t. “Tell me,” he said, looping his arms around Aziraphale’s shoulders to keep him close. “I’ll close my eyes and imagine it.”

“We’re _right here_ ,” Aziraphale huffed back, but instead of disentangling himself he pressed Crowley up against the kitchen worktop and settled against him, warm and waiting. “Are you imagining?”

Crowley closed his eyes. The smell in the air was cool and green and dark, wind and old paper, juniper and cedar. Like the earthy shade of a forest, safe and close. He let the darkness of it fall over him like the shade of a wing. “All right, go on. Tell me.”

“You saw the garden,” Aziraphale began.

He talked instead about dinner with wine and candles on a patio, and about legs tangled together on a sofa in front of a fireplace when the nights turned cold. He told Crowley about the tub waiting to be filled with eucalyptus and lavender waters, made ready for a bath; he told Crowley about the leather chaise waiting to be draped with blankets, made ready for a nap.

He talked about the sunrise, and cups of coffee shared over a breakfast table; he talked about long afternoons in the sea-scented sun, racing the Bentley through back roads on the way to antique shops and little bakeries and views of the coast.

He said barely a word about the house itself, about the size or shape or features of it, and Crowley wanted it all so badly he _ached_ , he ached all over, in the insides of his elbows and in the backs of his teeth and between his fingers and his toes.

“And then,” Aziraphale said, a soft murmur against Crowley’s temple, nosing into the line of his hair, one hand absently stroking a path up his spine, “if you want—and only if you want, mind—at night there’s a bedroom too.”

Crowley’s mind blanked out. “Only at night?”

He could feel the curve of Aziraphale’s smile as it spread, pressed against his skin. “Well, it’s there all the time, but night is traditional. I’m not much for sleeping, but I wouldn’t mind keeping you company.”

Crowley pulled back and looked at him, properly looked at him. Aziraphale’s smile was easy and unbothered, but there was a weight in his eyes, a question or a doubt still left unsaid. His hands pulled back from their lazy paths up and down Crowley’s sides and came to a stop on his hips, barely hanging on.

 _Am I going too fast?_ Aziraphale’s gaze asked. _Do you need me to slow down?_

It _was_ too fast. It was unbearably fast, _unthinkably_ fast; Crowley felt like he was being washed out with the tide, pulled under the waves and lost in the salt water; he felt like he was being flung into space, the centrifugal force of it pressing in on all sides, jettisoning him out into the black. 

Four hours ago he’d been slouched half-drunk on the sofa in the backroom of the bookshop, frozen under the weight of the chocolates he’d left in the Bentley, too afraid to have brought them inside, and now—now he was _here_ , and when Aziraphale talked about this place he didn’t talk about the rooms or the windows or the furniture, he talked about _togetherness_ , the endless stretch of a future that could be theirs and theirs _as one_.

And Aziraphale had said _yes_.

Too fast, altogether too fast—but then, Crowley thought, maybe they were finally going the same speed.

He wet his lips and tested the accelerator. “What kind of company?”

“For whatever you’d like.” Aziraphale’s hands pressed harder into Crowley’s hips. “Anything you’d like.”

Crowley looked at him through the dark. “And what would _you_ like?”

One of them was leaning in again. Maybe both of them were. The space between them was warm and magnetic, thick with promises. _I will, I won’t, I’ll follow your lead._

“ _Everything_ ,” Aziraphale said, and the space between them disappeared.

*

He’d imagined this a thousand times and never imagined it like this: kissing Aziraphale.

They met fiercely, full of fire, dragging each other closer and closer until Crowley thought he could feel Aziraphale’s racing heart beating in his own chest. Every touch burned along Crowley’s skin, every shift of Aziraphale’s shoulders and press of his hips leaving scorching trails like ley lines on his body— _this, this is where he touched me_. Aziraphale tasted hot and wet and _alive_ , a static shock that dazzled along all of Crowley’s senses and turned his hands rough against Aziraphale’s jacket, his waistcoat, the button on his sleeves.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale groaned, _“Crowley_ ,” and then they were moving, stumbling from shadow to shadow past the darkened doorways and illuminated rooms, past the hulking shapes of a sofa, a desk, bookshelves already stuffed full with leather and parchment and window ledges still barren and empty, waiting for something lush and green to fill them.

Finally Aziraphale pulled to stop, pressed Crowley into the frame of a door, kissed the underside of his jaw. “We can change anything you don’t like,” he started, “but I hope—”

“Oh, for Someone’s sake—” Crowley was already gasping with want, his body fighting at the seams of his clothes, desperate to feel skin against his own skin— “Angel, I don’t care if it looks like a sodding church in there, as long as there’s a bed in it.”

Aziraphale laughed, the absolute wanker, and bullied Crowley through the door, where there was a bed and a fireplace and even a telly, which Crowley knew immediately would drive Aziraphale crazy but which _he_ would love on slow Saturday mornings, watching cartoons or cooking shows, as well as something that might have been a Victorian washstand, which Crowley immediately resolved to ignore for the next thirty years.

He had time, after all, and this would be theirs for the rest of it.

“Fancy,” Crowley managed, feeling the way he imagined things generally felt right before they spontaneously combusted. He eyed the bed, chest thick with something like hunger, something like fear. “These sheets better not be flannel.”

“I _thought_ about silk,” Aziraphale said wryly, and then he tumbled Crowley down onto them, ignoring the disgruntled shout and pressing a hot kiss to the exposed side of his waist where his shirt had ridden up. “Just to watch you wiggle on them.”

“I do _not_ wiggle!” Crowley protested, but he was laughing, and Aziraphale was rucking up his shirt to kiss across his belly, over the bottom of his ribs, into the sensitive, absolutely-and-most-definitely- _not_ ticklish places in the curve of his waist.

“Oh, just look at you,” Aziraphale giggled back, kissing that vulnerable stretch again, just to watch Crowley’s muscles jump. “Wiggling like anything.”

“I’ll show you _wiggling—”_

Crowley wrenched himself up off the mattress, laughing still, to push Aziraphale down into the pillows and find his mouth, the curve of his jaw, the shell of his ear, to make him laugh himself breathless as Crowley slipped away the bow-tie, as he undid the buttons of the waistcoat, one-by-one.

“This would be easier,” he huffed, around the time he was trying to undo the buttons of the soft blue shirt underneath, when Aziraphale had one hand in his hair and the other feeling out the shape of his belt buckle and his arms were in the bloody _way_ and it was all driving Crowley absolutely around the bend, making his thighs ache and his blood pulse hot, “if you would hold still.”

Aziraphale’s flush extended all the way down his chest, Crowley saw, and he finally dodged those seeking hands to press his mouth against the skin there, against the soft, spare hairs, the hard shield of the breastbone underneath, and deeper still, the beating of a heart.

“If _I_ would hold still?” Aziraphale began indignantly, but the rest of his complaint was lost just then as Crowley found the tight pink nub of a nipple, and Aziraphale’s hands tightened in Crowley’s hair, holding him in place as he nipped and sucked and _adored._

The blue button-up shirt was cast aside. The bow-tie was probably in a sixth dimension by now. Buttons were undone, fabric shuffled down, disappeared, and here Aziraphale was: in folds and in curves and in planes, the slopes of his shoulders, the span of his thighs, the blond-white dust of hair across his chest, gathering dark and golden between his legs. Naked and flushed and straining, adoring Crowley back.

Aziraphale reached for him, but Crowley caught his hand mid-way—he was still wearing the ring.

Something hot and affectionate threatened to build in Crowley’s eyes again. He ducked his head, mouthed a line up Aziraphale’s thigh to cover it.

“You’re not being very sporting,” Aziraphale said unevenly, watching with pink cheeks as Crowley nosed at the hard length of Aziraphale’s cock, inhaling the musk and the heat of him. It might’ve been a complaint, but for the desperate way he said it, but for the way he pushed himself more firmly into Crowley’s hand.

“No?” Crowley’s tongue flicked out, tasting. Aziraphale had a beautiful cock, really. Thick. “Would you like to register a complaint?”

“I’ve barely gotten to touch you.”

That was hardly true, Crowley knew, flicking his tongue out again. Aziraphale had his hands all over him, smoothing rhythms down his shoulders and arms, exploring the hollows of his collarbones and his ribs. His own black shirt had been pulled away over his head ages ago, discarded on the chair next to the fireplace—neatly folded, of course, by the time it landed—and his hair would probably never lay right again.

“You poor thing,” Crowley answered. “I suppose I could be . . . _open_. To suggestions.”

And he looked up and met Aziraphale’s eyes, his mouth dropping open only centimetres from the flushed head of Aziraphale’s cock, his tongue laying flat over the line of his teeth. Holding himself there, waiting, in clear invitation.

 _You lead,_ Crowley’s gaze said. _I’ll follow._

“You fiend,” Aziraphale rasp, but his hands dragged across Crowley’s shoulders as his hips shifted just _so,_ and he slid himself in.

Crowley groaned, and immediately took over, closing his lips over the heat of him, sinking down and discovering the weight of him in his mouth, the bitter electricity of his taste, the places he liked best to have tongued and massaged and focused on and skipped past. Aziraphale made all kinds of noises above him as he sucked, his hips jolting and tensing, trying to keep themselves still, and his hands scrabbled and clung and _held on_.

Finally the clasp of Aziraphale’s hands turned purposeful, pulling Crowley up and off, “Come here, come here,” repeated almost mindlessly. Crowley went, slipping alongside Aziraphale’s body, biting back moans at the feeling of their skin catching together, damp with sweat.

“Tell me what you want,” Aziraphale said, moving the kiss to the hinge of Crowley’s jaw, warm and a little unsteady. “Whatever you’d like best.”

“’S’a long list, angel,” Crowley huffed back, trying to keep one hand around Aziraphale’s cock even as his concentration started to unspool at the exploration of Aziraphale’s mouth. The awkward angle wasn’t helping, and neither was Crowley’s own cock, still aching and heavy and untouched; he’d undone his trousers but hadn’t pulled them off yet, hadn’t pulled himself out yet, hadn’t wanted to race across a finish line before Aziraphale had decided where it ought to be marked out.

Aziraphale seemed intent to mark it out now, with a kiss so deep Crowley felt it in his toes and a hand sliding down between them, a suggestion of deft fingers, stopping just before they found anything really desperate.

“I’m not in any rush,” Aziraphale said, clearly gone a bit smug at the feeling of Crowley writhing under his hand. “I could do them alphabetically, if you’re having trouble deciding.”

“Oh yeah? A is for ankle?” Crowley grinned, more wickedly than he felt, went a little bit mad at the feeling of Aziraphale’s answering smile against his chest. “B is for big—”

“ _Don’t_ be crude—”

“I was going to say _biceps_ , actually—”

He stopped, breath catching in his throat, and so did the crawl of Aziraphale’s fingers across his lower abdomen. Their eyes met; Aziraphale’s eyebrow raised in a silent question.

Crowley had never imagined this before. Had never dared to wonder.

“I—” he choked on the curl of the words in his throat, suddenly uncertain. Every possibility unfurled around them, but each seemed as unlikely as the next—Aziraphale with those soft, manicured hands wrapped around Crowley’s cock, or sliding his mouth down and moaning the way he did when the Ritz had mango panna cotta on the dessert menu, or his fingers—his _tongue—_ reaching _into—_ his body becoming _part of_ , if only for a moment—it all seemed so distant, unreachable, even with the heat of Aziraphale’s hands on him, with taste of Aziraphale’s precome still dissipating in his mouth.

Aziraphale’s hand hadn’t moved, gave neither an inch nor claimed any new ground. His thumb, resting higher up toward Crowley’s navel—which Crowley’d put in sometime around 3977 BCE, a very tasteful _innie_ that still seemed, at times, almost painfully human on himself—began to stroke, tender and slow, against smooth skin, against the small crinkly hairs leading down and down and down.

 _You lead_ , Aziraphale’s eyes said, without expectation, without hurry. _This time I’ll follow._

Crowley tipped his head, short and sharp and surrendering: _all I have left for you is yes._

Aziraphale slid his fingers down those last few centimetres. “C,” he said, with a grin that could very nearly be called a _smirk_ , “is for cock.”

And then he was there, his warm hand wrapping so confidently round, stroking and moving, sending sparks up Crowley’s spine and down into his thighs. He was there, kissing the expanse of Crowley’s chest, the vulnerable spaces just below his ribcage, that terribly human divot of his belly button. He was there, tonguing the head of Crowley’s cock, shifting his legs apart, dipping fingers below and beneath into the humid, shallow places of Crowley’s body.

“Tell me,” he whispered, again and again, and Crowley’s knees spread wider, his hips tilted up, and Aziraphale was there, taking over every inch Crowley offered to him. Aziraphale was there, stroking against the sensitive rim of his hole, questioning, until Crowley pressed _down_ , seeking; “Tell me,” he whispered, with Crowley’s cock resting feverish and red against the cool skin of his cheek as he concentrated on _careful_ and _gentle_ and _deliberate_ , easing his fingertips inside as Crowley burned around him; “Tell me,” he whispered, until Crowley was open-mouthed and panting, shoving himself down over and over to find that one striking spot and all the length of Aziraphale’s fingers, and Crowley could feel the words _building_ , raising themselves up from somewhere deep inside, forging themselves white-hot and frantic on the tip of his tongue.

“Kiss me,” Crowley finally gasped, and Aziraphale was there, too, and the heat of the _want_ in their mouths tasted like chocolate, and like lightning, and like salt. “You know what I want.”

“I’m very sure I do,” Aziraphale agreed, kissing him and kissing him, “but it’d be nice to hear you say it.”

“You’re a damn tease. Have been for a thousand years. You and your sodding— _ah—_ pink shoes.”

Aziraphale was concentrating on something else between them, something slick and open and hungry, but he looked up then. “Pink shoes? I haven’t worn pink shoes since—”

And then he was laughing, and Crowley was saying, “Yes, all right, all right, so I have a thing about Paris, get it out, will you—” and Aziraphale was kissing him deeper and harder and the breath of laughter shared between them just about _hollowed Crowley out_ , and he suddenly had his hands around Aziraphale’s face, in his hair, holding his neck, telling him, couldn’t stop telling him—“I want you, I want to feel you inside _, please_ —”

And then Aziraphale was there, pushing in, and all of the air in the room went out.

 _This is how he feels_ , Crowley thought, with sudden clarity. He was thick and hot and slick and wanting, the same way Crowley was; shaking in his thighs, mouth-damp and sweaty-fingered, the same way Crowley was; he had a belly button, an innie like Crowley had, and he had lines at the edges of his eyes that fold into his cheeks from years of smiling, the way Crowley hoped _he_ would too someday, and his mouth was sliding into something cracked open and wild, the same way Crowley felt. _This is what he’s like._

Aziraphale paused, pressed flush against him, and brushed the hair out of Crowley’s eyes. “All right?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah,” Crowley managed, swallowing hard. “You feel—you feel—”

“ _Yes_ ,” Aziraphale said, when Crowley couldn’t finish his thought. “I feel you too.”

Six thousand years, and Crowley hadn’t ever even imagined what it would be like.

He’d never imagined Aziraphale’s hands on him, pushing him back against the bed to _hold_ him, to _keep_ him. He’d never dreamed Aziraphale’s mouth on his, biting and sweet, hot against his neck, his stomach, the blade of his hips. He’d never thought about circling himself around Aziraphale’s body, wrapping him in arms and thighs and calves, about the breadth of Aziraphale’s chest and the curve of Aziraphale’s stomach, about the strength of his thighs and the shift of his hips and the damn blessed thrust of his cock deep inside, making room for himself, working his way in over and over, again and again, moving their bodies together and tangling their hands together and mumbling against his skin, _Crowley, Crowley, Crowley—_ never wondered what it would be like to be underneath him, surrounded by him, never wondered what it would be like to bare his skin and let Aziraphale see it and touch it and _know it_ , every inch.

To know him.

Crowley had been made of love, once.

The way Crowley loved now was _different_ than the way it was back then, different and beautiful and _true_ , whispering words into each other’s mouths and hearing them echoed back through their crash of their hope-driven hearts, _I love you, I love you_ , it was red roses in black vases, lined with thorns and treasured anyway, the measured consideration of days to come and soil where an apple tree would grow to fill his mouth with the taste of honey, _I love you, I love you_ , it was the flex and flute of muscles and the rhythm and rock of hips and Aziraphale’s hands searching in the sheets, _I love you, I love you_ , Aziraphale’s eyes shining in the dark, watching him writhe and stretch and arch and clasp, watching him _want_ and giving him _everything_ , more than he could bear, filling him until his body trembled from tip to tail and his hands clenched and he cried out, _I love you, I love you_ , and it was _different_ now, the way Crowley loved, it was _catharsis_ , it was _resolution_ , _I love you, I love you_ , washed clean of doubt, given breath, given _life_ , it was questions and it was answers and it was _yes_ , it was _always going to be yes_.

The way Crowley loved was different now because Crowley loved _back_ , he loved _with_ , reaching a hand into the dark to find someone waiting for him, standing up at the end of the world to find something to believe in, and when Aziraphale started to lose the rhythm, when he started to shake apart, he stroked one hand around Crowley’s cock and held the other against Crowley’s heart and said _I love you I love you I love you_ , and Crowley knew it was different because he knew, suddenly he _knew_ , in a way he’d never even _imagined_ knowing before _—_

He wasn’t alone. He would never be alone again.

Everything was coalescing, combining, building, racing along his every nerve, digging into the depths of his body and hooking in, holding on, opening up, thunderous and electric and _Aziraphale was there_ —

Crowley came, and it was like taking flight. 

Aziraphale soared after him, fumbling for his hands and holding him close, and together they circled, caught in spiraling arms of the galaxy, in the atmosphere, in the wind currents. In the first suggestion of a pale haze on the horizon; in the frost-bitten brambles of a garden growing wild, welcoming them home.

 _I love you,_ someone said, _I love you._

*

“You’ve got,” Crowley mumbled, one eye cracking open, “a flower in your hair.”

“Mm?” Aziraphale reached up, feeling blindly; his fingers came back with the red-dark curl of a petal, holding it out in the grey light of dawn. “Oh, mm. Rose petals. They’re everywhere, just now.” 

Crowley could smell them, now that he’d noticed it: a dark, fresh smell, sweet like fresh rain and earth. Crushed in the sheets, no doubt. He probably had a fair few in his own hair. “Was that one of yours or one of mine?” 

“No idea,” Aziraphale said, and he sounded rather pleased about it. 

“Yours, then.”

“Could’ve been yours.”

“If it’d been mine it would’ve been—I dunno. Foxgloves or hemlock or something. Poison ivy.” 

“It might have been yours.”

“Or those great big mushroom things—big as your head, you know, big red and white ones? Popping up out of the mattress. Like daisies.”

“They were someone’s, anyway,” Aziraphale conceded, and he slid across the pillows to kiss Crowley soundly, all exposed shoulders and collarbones and soft wiry hair on his chest. “You go a bit silly when you’re first awake.” 

Crowley’s nose wrinkled. “I didn’t fall asleep,” he protested. Aziraphale gave him a look. “I wasn’t asleep!” 

“Then neither was I,” Aziraphale said, in a way that made Crowley think he very much had been, and then they were both giggling and Aziraphale was pulling him across the bed, into his arms. A lesser demon might’ve called it _cuddling_ ; Crowley called it _aggressive reconnaissance on the softness of permanently earthbound angels._

His report, which would never be filed anywhere other than a shoddy-looking filing cabinet in a potting shed he’d just decided he would have, was thus far inconclusive. Further reconnaissance was required. Much further. A lifetime worth of further. 

“Last night,” Aziraphale said suddenly. “In Paris.” 

Crowley hummed. He was plotting subsections of the report: _on the warmth of permanently earthbound angels, on the smell of permanently earthbound angels. On the effect of a ring on permanently Crowley-bound angels._

“It was lovely,” Aziraphale went on. “Absolutely one of the loveliest things I’ve ever seen.” 

This sounded suspiciously like a compliment; Crowley ignored it. _On the sounds of permanently Crowley-bound angels when served breakfast in bed_ —now there was a thought.

“So lovely, in fact,” Aziraphale kept on, as Crowley silently added _on the talkativeness of permanently Crowley-bound angels during what should be silent reconnaissance_ to his list, as well as _proposed resolutions, number one: kissing_ , “that it almost seemed . . . prepared. Like a magazine spread.”

Crowley stopped planning his list, and shifted so he could raise an eyebrow dramatically in Aziraphale’s direction. “What’re you getting at?”

“Nothing, nothing. It was just such a _precise_ scene to be dropped into. Almost as if, well,” he shot a glance at Crowley and flushed pink around the ears. “As if someone had thought it all out in _advance_. I do wonder how long really it would take to get all those fiddly little details right, and if someone had gone through all that trouble it would have been really rather kind, and—”

Crowley huffed and began to draw away. “If you’re going to be casting aspersions—”

“Nobody’s casting aspersions,” Aziraphale said, innocent in the way only extremely guilty angels could be. “Just remarking on the incredible _coincidence_ of it all.”

There was a heavy, anticipatory pause.

“Fine! Fine,” Crowley finally caved, crumbling like so much bad pastry on a humid day. He shoved himself back onto his own pillow and stared petulantly at the ceiling. “I saw it once in a commercial in 1997 and never got it out of my head. Bloody soppy—absurd, really, I mean, the _standards_ they try to push on people, these greedy little jewellers—you’d think _I_ had had something to do with it, but _no_ —”

“Oh, _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale interrupted, sounding horrifically romanced. “You’ve wanted to marry me since 1997?”

Crowley stopped mid-rant. Blinked carefully. “Well. You know. Bit before that, probably. Paris didn’t always feature.”

“Was it that time in 1955 we both accidentally ended up in Majorca for a long weekend? You were quite dazzling on all those beaches, you know.”

“Pffft. Don’t be ridiculous.” 

“Before that even? Don’t tell me it was the Reign of Terror. Couldn’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Hardly the atmosphere, for one. And it was so _very_ long ago. Even if you did remember my shoes. They were very nice shoes, weren’t they?”

“The Reign of Terror was barely more than two hundred years ago, angel.”

“Yes, but—”

Crowley huffed, and rolled himself up to loom over Aziraphale; a cascade of rose petals tumbled around in his wake, falling from his hair. “I’ve wanted to marry you since marriage was _invented,”_ he said roughly. “Two hundred years is nothing, promise.”

Aziraphale’s eyes widened. “Since—oh. _Oh_.”

“Yeah, _oh_.” He flopped back onto the mattress, suddenly terribly embarrassed. “Look, let’s not make a fuss about it, all right? It’s all—it’s all sorted now anyway.”

Aziraphale was quiet for a moment. Crowley started to wonder whether his reconnaissance would be permanently cut short. _Results ruined: updated speed limits were not, in fact, retroactive_. 

But then Aziraphale reached down, searching out Crowley’s hand in the sheets. He pressed a slow, deliberate kiss to the fourth finger, closing his eyes, breathing in and blowing out, air washing gently over him. 

When Crowley looked, there was a ring there. A slim gold band, already warm against his skin. _It’s always going to be yes._

“There,” Aziraphale said, quite pleased with himself. “ _Now_ it’s all sorted.”

Something deep in Crowley’s chest felt raw, and hot, as if something long since torn apart had finally been mended. His voice turned thick in his throat. “Awfully possessive for an angel, aren’t you?”

“Terribly so.”

“Happy now?”

“You know,” Aziraphale said consideringly, “I really, really am. Are you?”

Crowley shifted his weight back into Aziraphale’s arms, let his head fall onto Aziraphale’s chest. Sunlight was creeping in through the windows, illuminating the tangle of their feet under the covers. He could see the glint of something warm and gold out of the corner of his eye, where Aziraphale’s left hand had gone around his shoulders to hold him in close, and he curled his own hand around the matching promise he’d been given, held it tight against the place in him that felt like he’d been stitched back together.

He said, “Yes.”

*

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @[forineffablereasons](http://www.forineffablereasons.tumblr.com) or on my main @[watsonshoneybee](http://www.watsonshoneybee.tumblr.com)!


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